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AMC looks softer than most other HD broadcasts. Can all be better? Sure.

Right now on NBC, which usually has a very good HD broadcast, the picture is extremely soft- as they're showing a feed from the UK- some Jubilee stuff- obviously very compressed somewhere along the line, though it is their own feed.

The first several weeks (few months?) of AMCHD on D* wasn't just soft --it was jerky/artifacty. Badly. Somebody moved their head too fast and it did it. Elevator door closings (common on Mad Men) were a total stutter-fest.

It was my impression that the MPEG4 decoding is all done in hardware. That the older MPEG2 was also decoded in hardware.

These DVRS used by either service do not have the CPU power to decode in software. I have a I3 based computer that can barely handle 1080i.

The Processors in the DVRs only have to handle things like the timers, Remote keypress, and the guide (DVR content) and then hand it off to the proper hardware to do the actual functions.

Hardware acceleration still has to have a software layer and available memory to access it, and optimizing that software layer can still provide gains in efficiency or performance. What I'm not sure of, is whether these new efficiencies provided by the 8190 at the encode end imply new load on the decode end. Maybe, maybe not. The engineering document linked upstream certainly does not state or imply that it would, and it appears to have been written more from an engineering perspective than a marketing perspective, so I'd think it'd have gotten mentioned if it did. Which is a long way of saying, I'm starting to back-off on that point.

A general purpose CPU is hardware acceleration too. . . it just doesn't do the stuff you want it to do in this case as fast as special purpose hardware can do it. But even that is changing as "general purpose" CPU manufacturers are incorporating more and more video function-specific blocks of hardware inside their general purpose CPUs.

Wow 39mbps that's it? Very close to Cable's 38.8 Mbps. So when cable goes MPEG4 they should get 5 to 6 channels a QAM. Looks like Verizon Fios added 10 new Spanish HD channels but only uses 12Mhz (2 QAM channels) to do so. Cablevision and Blue Ridge Cable have been squeezing some 4 MPEG2 HD's in 38mbps and Comcast, TWC, Service Electric and others have only gone as far as 3 HD's per 38mbps.

Point is 6 at MPEG4 should be easy at that rate. I wouldn't be surprised if 7 HD's could fit if they were all 720p. Or maybe 6HD + 1 SD since they like to overcompress SD anyway.

I have a feeling of 'deja vu' ... same movements (cramp more channels) as dish did a few years ago. If you remember DishLite campaign...
It could happen invisible to all of us, just unfortunate for these 'conspirators' - the site's activists bringing 'secrets' to public eyes. I'm pretty sure - regular consumers (99.75%) wouldn't notice the changes and 100% would just don't care. If I'm correct then it would explain why DTV gave us no official statement of the serious changes.

I have a feeling of 'deja vu' ... same movements (cramp more channels) as dish did a few years ago. If you remember DishLite campaign...It could happen invisible to all of us, just unfortunate for these 'conspirators' - the site's activists bringing 'secrets' to public eyes. I'm pretty sure - regular consumers (99.75%) wouldn't notice the changes and 100% would just don't care. If I'm correct then it would explain why DTV gave us no official statement of the serious changes.

Or they may really have upgraded technology with no noticeable change in quality.

If it's true there should be public statement - it would be positive moment for an image the company.

Why? They never announce anything except For sat launches and new channels. They. Never announce rearrangements or changes in picture quality. Did you see them state they have better pic quality than they used to when they launched mpeg4 vs mpeg2? Nope.

Very interesting indeed. The only thing I worry about is that they long ago said that they may have toss d10 early. So the question could be made is this move to eliminated some of its workload for power or other reasons. Hopefully it's just prep work. Do we know if d10 and d12 get their channels from the same earth stations?

Hopefully this is prep for all the encore and other rainbow media channels, and way early work in anticipation of all the new RSNs coming online in the next 9 months.